Weird News (Week of 05.16.10)

Breadcrumb

This time around: Toddlers Flung Through Windshields, Voodoo Grave
Robbers, Sleeping Gas, An Innocent Man Requesting Guns From a
Lawnmower, Abandoned Blind Women, and Nude Photos of Steven Seagal. OK,
maybe not nude nude. Nude except for his clothes and shoes and
eyes.

Also, from now on I'll be including a short list of links to cool stuff
(top 10 lists, guides, infographics, etc) from around the internet.
These will be at the end of the article under the heading of "Link
Roundup", so go ahead and skip there if you want to see the best stuff
(i.e. the stuff that wasn't written by me). But I hope you'll enjoy
clicking the links as much as I enjoy pasting them on the page and
subsequently hitting enter.

WEIRD NEWS STORIES OF THE WEEK

Bob Blount was playing cards with his wife Friday morning
when they
heard a crash and saw a toddler fly over the 18-foot soundwall near
their back yard. The tiny body landed in the grass hard, bouncing twice.

The child, a 1½ -year-old boy, propelled out of a car that rolled over
along Interstate 95, was practically uninjured.

"I think he was a little bit stunned," Blount said of the child, who
was crying.

Police in an Ohio town said they received about 15 calls
about a man on
a riding lawnmower yelling that "he wanted his guns." [The man] was
first seen riding his lawnmower near the courthouse on the town's
Public Square at about 12:26 p.m. Tuesday with a homemade white flag
bearing the words "not guilty" in black paint, The Medina Gazette
reported Wednesday.

Lt. Bob Starcher said police "must have gotten 15 calls" about the man
riding his mower and shouting that "he wanted his guns."

Williams was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and later
charged with a probation violation.

A blind woman from Vancouver Island is not sure she'll ever
fly alone
again after she was forgotten by flight attendants and locked in a
deserted plane at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. "I was instructed by the
flight attendant to wait until everybody else got off the plane," said
Cabot, 18, in an interview with CBC News from Jacksonville. "That's
what they tell me every time so I didn't think anything of it."

She said she heard the other passengers leave and then the unmistakable
sound of the aircraft door being sealed shut.

"And then, just complete silence. And I started calling out with no
response."

She said she was stuck for 10 minutes, uncertain what to do, but was
found by a maintenance crew that happened to enter the aircraft.

Police say a man may have dug up a partially raised grave
at a local
cemetery in order to steal dirt to use for religious purposes.

Sunday, workers noticed a grave had been disturbed at the cemetery and
on Monday afternoon a parks security officer noticed two men walking
away from the grave. When they saw the officer, both men took off
running. During the chase, the officer says Andres Sotelo-Rivero, 44,
threw a brick at him..

Inside the backpack [one man] was carrying, officers found a tire iron,
a hammer and bones. The bones are human remains, the medical examiner
confirmed. County workers said it's likely the bones were stolen to be
used for voodoo rituals. They said it's becoming a growing problem, and
it's the third such theft this year alone.

The bones are often found at an area beach, along with goat and chicken
heads.

New Delhi police said thieves are pouring sleep-inducing
gas into air
conditioning units to knock out homeowners during burglaries.
Investigators said the thieves pour the gas into the window-mounted
units, which fan air through wet grass, and wait for homeowners to fall
asleep before relieving them of their valuables, Sky News reported
Friday.

The gang took about $11,500 worth of cash and jewelry from a home this
week and made off with $20,000 in of cash and goods earlier in the
month.

Police said one of the victims reported a "revolting odor" coming from
the air conditioning unit.